Sleeping With Her Enemy, by Jenny Holiday
Jenny Holiday's novel Sleeping With Her Enemy is currently available as a $0.99 e-book. I'm not sure I'd be as enthusiastic about it if it had cost, say, $7.99, but at its current price it's an incredible bargain...
Books and booze
According to the website GoodEReader, Barnes and Noble has applied for a liquor license in New York State. An attorney who consulted with Barnes & Noble on the license application says that select Barnes and Noble locations will begin selling beer and wine in their cafes, possibly alongside new food options...
Store-brand fantasy
Uh... it's news to me that anyone was working on a TV adaptation of Terry Brooks’ Shannara book series, much less that it will be MTV's first foray into live-action fantasy. Seriously, guys? If you wanted to horn in on a little Game of Thrones-lite action, couldn't you...
Warren the 13th and the All-Seeing Eye, by Tania del Rio and Will Staehle
Warren the 13th and the All-Seeing Eye is a tribute to three people: Will Staehle, who created the title character, provided the illustrations, and designed the book, Tania del Rio, who wrote the story, and the unknown Quirk Books employee who agreed to publish such a detailed, gorgeous, labor-intensive work...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Warren the 13th and the All-Seeing Eye, by Tania del Rio and Will Staehle
This week's Book Giveaway is Warren the 13th and the All-Seeing Eye, written by Tania del Rio and illustrated by Will Staehle. I have no idea what this book is about (our review will follow later today, after I've actually read it), but with such A+++ art design, I'm not sure the story even matters...
Shopping for slackers
It's two days before Christmas, and I have a lot of experience working in bookstores at this time of year, so I thought I'd put together a quickie gift guide for my favorite kind of customer: the kind who shows up at 4:37 PM on Christmas Eve with $300 and no plan, ready to do 100% of their holiday shopping...
Sorry, try again.
Wow, this is the second time in less than a month that I am left rolling my eyes over a respected English professor's opinions about Jane Austen. (Note: Few things make me happier than hate-reading subpar Austen criticism...
Useful!
I'm totally in love with this Random Illustrated Facts Instagram, featuring artwork by children's illustrator Mike Lowery. (I already knew that thing about the national animal of Scotland being the unicorn, though, and it has always upset me. I mean, if...
Winter, by Marissa Meyer
I love Sailor Moon fanfiction and I love retold fairytales. You'd think combining the two would be an automatic win for me, but Marissa Meyer's best-selling Lunar Chronicles series proves that there's no such thing as a surefire bet...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Winter, by Marissa Meyer
This week's Book Giveaway is Marissa Meyer's Winter, the final installment in the best-selling Lunar Chronicles. I wasn't thrilled when Meyer delayed releasing the final novel in her series in favor of a quickie origin story for the antagonist (and charged eighteen bucks for it, too!), but it's probably time for me to get over it...
At least it will be better than Crimson Peak.
I'm not sure if I'll see this movie adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s novel High Rise (although I do like the "creepy sales pitch" vibe of the trailer), but it did leave me with a more pressing question...
Any excuse to use these covers
Elsewhere in The Guardian, there is a fascinating article about some new research about possible source material for Shakespeare's Macbeth. According to Dr John-Mark Philo, a lecturer at East Anglia University, there are close similarities between Lady Macbeth and two Roman queens...
No thanks.
The Guardian put together a list of the "Top Ten Uncanny Graphic Novels", for those of you with fearless natures, strong stomachs, and lots of disposable income. Their picks are all solid (and include Charles Burns's Black Hole, which I still haven't fully recovered from...
...okay, sure.
NPR recently posted an interview with Neil Gaiman about his classic Sandman comic book series. Sandman ended in 1996, but last month DC Comics released a deluxe edition of Sandman: Overture, the six-issue miniseries Gaiman wrote...
Spinning off
The "announcement trailer" is out for the hotly-anticipated (by Warner Bros, at least, who are clearly hoping that Harry Potter mania has not lost one ounce of its earlier fervor) movie adaptation of J.K. Rowling's Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them. I have to give the studio props...
I WANT IT.
And speaking of horror stories, check out this Soviet cuisine cookbook! The recipes in Moscow-based food writers/historians Olga and Pavel Syutkin's The CCCP Cookbook: True Stories of Soviet Cuisine might not...
The Man in the High Castle (TV adaptation), by Philip K. Dick
Last week we reviewed Philip K. Dick's 1962 novel The Man in the High Castle, so this week we thought we'd take a gander at the first episode of Amazon Prime's recent TV adaptation of the material. The complete first season of this series is available here...
But why?
And in other perplexing movie announcements, why does the upcoming Tarzan movie even exist? The teaser trailer looks pretty cheeseball, the promo pictures are ridiculous, and...
CGI hands creep me out
The teaser trailer has been released for Disney's upcoming adaptation of Roald Dahl's The BFG. This has never been one of my favorite books, so...
My eyes, they roll
Today in embarrassing book-banning news, a school board member in Marshfield, Wisconsin is trying to ban a Muppets book on the grounds that it contains images of suffering and poverty that are "too graphic" for a kindergarten audience...
Maybe a nice vacation?
So, I finally got around to watching the trailer for Captain America: Civil War. (It was posted last month, but my interest in Marvel's increasingly bloated universe is waning.) It looks...
Does not compute.
In an effort to arrive at a definitive list of the United Kingdom's greatest novels, BBC Culture contributor Jane Ciabattari polled 82 non-British book critics for their favorites. The resulting list is novels only (no short stories/poetry/plays), and it is perfectly respectable, although...
The Man in the High Castle, by Philip K. Dick
According to Wikipedia, Philip K. Dick considered his Hugo Award-winning 1962 novel The Man in the High Castle to be his masterpiece, but was too disturbed by his own creation to ever finish a sequel. Seeing as Dick made a career out of churning out disturbing literature, this might seem surprising, but...
Weekly Book Giveaway: The Man in the High Castle, by Philip K. Dick
This week's Book Giveaway is Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle, which has recently been transformed into a TV miniseries from Amazon. I usually find Dick's ideas more interesting than his actual novels, but what the hell: it's only 274 pages, so it can't be that bad either way...
Holiday Gift Guide Idea #8: Any of the literary posters at Pop Chart Lab
Gift Idea #8: Pop Chart Lab's extremely detailed literature-themed posters ($29)...
Holiday Gift Guide Idea #7: 2016 Jane Austen calendar
Gift Idea #7: "Amiable Rancor", the Republic of Pemberley's 2016 Jane Austen calendar ($19.99)...
Holiday Gift Guide Idea #6: Literary subscription boxes
Gift Idea #6: Literary subscription boxes (approx. $30 to $50 per box)...
Holiday Gift Guide Idea #5: Any of the great Alice's Adventures in Wonderland anniversary editions
Gift Idea #5: Any of the 3 billion (or so) 150th anniversary editions of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (approx. $10 to $50)...
Holiday Gift Guide Idea #4: Edward Gorey anything
Gift Idea #4: Any of the many fine goods at the Edward Gorey House Store (prices vary)...
